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Sunday, April 1, 2007

Botticelli's iconic woman


Botticelli only signed one picture, the Mystic Nativity, in which his single 'three beauties' model is replicated into a whole choir of dancing angels. Here she is in a drawing that plainly had to be attributed to Botticelli, even if unsigned. For it is she. I'd love to examine this picture closely in the museum that holds it. She is clearly talking, presumably something she did very much, although possibly not to Botticelli except when he was drawing her, because she may have been his servant and not his mistress. (Botticelli was probably gay: one of the few things we know is that he was arrested for sodomy in 1502, when his career was in freefall). Her plaits are bound at the side of the head in the manner of ancient Iberian women, who appear in the Valencian sculpture. So, it's a classic hair-do of the Mediterranean and can probably be found on the ancient mosaics in Crete and Santorini. Her bust is untypically full: the Gothic nudes of the era had little more than snake-bites. The nipples and aureoles are visible under her filmy garment, a modern touch. But her breasts may not have been drawn from life: they don't fall quite right. The artist makes her float by the device of having her hair and ribbons waving in an up-current, suggesting she is moving up and down. Her head angles to her right as if banking, and her mouth is open, perhaps in a cry of joy. She's not pregnant, indicating that she is not married and thus a virgin --- hence, perhaps, the breasts? I don't think any early Italian renaissance woman actually wore such gauzy garmentation: it's a meme replicated by Botticelli --- his signature style if you will. We'll never know who this model of Botticelli's was, (we know little enough about him) but in today's overcrowded world her figure and above all her face, are assured of immortality.

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